interest of his own mind in the facts and problems contained within the dramatic development, to suggest the largest aspects of thought in its bearing on these matters of human life-to suggest the uncertainty and incompleteness of art and of thought in dealing with the complex drama even of single souls in situations that involve their lives and their resources.

And the fact is broadly that Browning does not and cannot use his dramatic power simply as a poet or merely as a dramatist. He has the power to present poetry dramatic and accurate in his kind of work. He is not, as some think, a critic of life who uses poetry as the medium of his criticism, or a thinker who uses dramatic forms to state in the terms of life his conclusions about life. He is a dramatist of true power, and his poetry as such is vitally clear and right. But behind and about all you have the thinker. It is not necessary here to settle which interest of the poet is the stronger, the poetic or the speculative and in some of the poems it is impossible to settle it--but, without seeking to determine that question for the poet's mind, it is clear that he regards dramatic poetry as a medium vital, and therefore most valuable, for presenting the problems of the soul, and of life, and unless this be regarded in his work he must often bewilder.

Enough, however, of reasons arising from this side of the poetry. Many will deem that a reason more on the surface has much to answer for. I refer to the style of the poet. If that had been other and clearer,

the business of reading had been easier. Browning's style is distinct and individual. Its merits and faults are mainly his own. His utterance is the energetic reflex of the man and his thought. As such it must be known; and it is swift and abrupt like the thought, and condensed often as the thought is concentrated. Thought and fact are primary, and language must bend to the intense thinking. His elisions are often puzzling, his clauses numerous, his qualifications tiresome; his similes, often happy, are strange at times; and his metaphors sometimes run away with him, and become a thing apart and grotesque. There are parts that look as if they had been thrown off with a profuse energy and indifference to finish-parts that look like full and vigorous notes for work rather than the complete work. Beauty of expression seems of small account compared with distinct and forcible statement, and his own keenness and energy of mind have led to his thinking too little of other minds.

All that may be said of Browning's style, and yet this poet is really great in point of style, original and powerful in this as in matter. Casual, harsh, and capricious as he seems at times, reckless and grotesque as he seems, he is in his best work masterly and sufficient. He is Shaksperian in fulness, rapidity, and mastery of utterance. His style is, perhaps, the most vital and natural of recent poets-the fit medium and counterpart of his matter; with great simplicity often, great vivacity, with muscular quality and grasp, and with nothing rhetorical or obtrusive about it.

To compare Browning and Tennyson in the matter of style, is to find a measure of their merits and differences. Beauty, finish, musical and emotional charm, care for every verse and line and for the parts as parts, and care for verse and phrase as things of beauty and pleasure in themselves—these are Tennyson's qualities, not Browning's; but in Browning power and mastery of matter and word, tense grasp and alert speech, force, animation, trenchant and decisive bearing on the main purpose. There is manliness and sincerity, an upright and masculine temper, even in his speech, the pertinence and freedom of animated and competent talk; and such style fits his method, and lies close to his thoughts.

It is laid to his charge that he is never lyrical and poetic in the sense some have got to regard as the whole of poetry. His tone and colour are too low. Plain in word, and almost prosaic in pitch, he offends some. But that is to miss his standpoint and design. His style is framed to his purpose, and in its qualities, and what some think its defects, it may be regarded as the reflex both of his mode of thought and his view of his whole subject. Its quality and tints are realistic. Its discords and grotesqueness of phrase and line belong to its dramatic humour, and give the key of the writer's thought. But the results are not art, it may be said. They are not classic, but Gothic art—a more natural and complete art, because more sufficient as an image of life. And our great dramatic thinker and poet sees so forcibly the quality

of life, its incompleteness, its moral infinity; he sees how all character is manifold, intricate, never to be seized or expressed in its exact truth; he is set on the "soul," and, as language can at its best but indicate the life of that, he is satisfied that his style. should be the shadow and consequence of his "criticism" of life and of art's just relation to it.

As to verse, and his powers in that matter. In the opinion of some he has been indifferent here. But he is really capable of great metrical skill, as many poems show in all parts and periods of his work. So fine a judge as Mr. Watts speaks of such passages, "hundreds in which the music is quite new, quite his own, and entirely beautiful," though the critic thinks the poet often "led astray by his quest for new movements." His use of rhyme is a trying point to some, part of his humour often; but his blank verse is fluent and masterly, no doubt because it is the most suitable to his mode of art and his theme-the verse that is nearest to speech, as has been said.

It has now become clear that, on whatever side Browning's work is regarded, you can understand it only as you discern and allow for its dramatic quality and design. He is the modern poet of man, positive, comprehensive, and spiritual, and he has the largest qualification for the work of any recent English poet. The characteristics of his work, the way in which he touches and illustrates human life and man's nature, the body of thought and character through

which it is done, the genius and personality that inspire and vitalize it, the outcome of it, and the impression made by the whole work as a view of the life of man, these questions arise when we come to regard the work in its whole extent, and to estimate it with reference to its great subject.

Some of these matters we shall consider along with the groups of poems that illustrate them. It will be well here to mark certain general principles and features of the work and of the poet. And, first, looking at the poetry as characterization of the lives of men, what wealth and variety of character it contains, through so many types, times, and races,-Greek, Eastern, Mediæval, Renaissance, Modern! And the freedom of moral scope is as great as the variety of type. It passes from Caliban to Aben Ezra. The readiness and versatility of mind this implies are only part of what it involves. The wide research and frank curiosity are matched by the moral breadth and impartiality of nature. To really present not the actions, but the minds and feelings of so many "persons;" to identify the mind with them so far as to give the being and body of their experience ;—this means a rare width and freedom of spirit, a rare power to enter into the thoughts of men. Nor is it intellectual comprehension only, large and subtle as that is. There is free emotion. There is sympathy, and frank regard, which throws itself into the particular case for the time, making it real, giving not only the process of thought, but the play of

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